Michael Ackerman

June 18, 2009 9:03 PM

Michael Ackerman is an Israeli-born photographer whose haunting visions of New York, Varanasi, and Poland are characterized by their grainy texture, extreme contrast, and uncompromising intensity.

Ackerman was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography in 1998 and has since published two books, the prize-winning End Time City (1999) and Fiction (2001). Exhibitions of his work have been held across Europe and North America, and he is expected to publish his third book, Half Life, in 2009.

posted by Houyhnhnm (13 comments total)

Yet, we are awake and Michael Ackerman compels us to have our eyes wide open. The border is also the contact point with the Other. It’s a meeting place. Bodies and landscapes are bathed in an intangible haze and yet, they are unmistakably printed on film.

Yes unmistakably
posted by mattoxic at 9:13 PM on June 18

The NYC set seems like a 50 year anniversary retread of William Klein to my jaded eyes but the other stuff is a bit fresher. Even so he doesn't really escape the gravitational drag of silver halide (and I say that as a HUGE film afficianado). When Klein and Frank were doing this stuff, they were using cutting edge technology (the Leica 35mm camera) and the 'style' was much less a style than a consequence of being forced to push the film in order to capture the image. However to do the same now is basically a stylistic choice (more or less) since you could shoot the same thing @ 1600 iso on a digicam and get a nice sharp colorful image. He gets a pass for the swing lens stuff which was my favorite, since you can't do that on a moving subject in digital yet.
posted by unSane at 9:29 PM on June 18

What gives! His blurry, black & white pictures look way better than my crystal clear color photos.

Sony Cybershot, you got some 'splainin' to do!
posted by bpm140 at 9:40 PM on June 18 [4 favorites]

I like the images (what I can see of them).

That said,
- I wish the images were bigger. If you're going to bother to display your work, please put it up in decent size. Why would I bother to order it in hi-res if I've never actually seen it?
- I wish people would give up on the "sliding thumbnail navigation that refuses to sit still" navigation bar. It was sort of cool once in 2002 or so, but now it's just annoying.
/rant
posted by doctor_negative at 10:27 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

For people who work where Art is no excuse for Nekkid, there is at least one photo here of a very young woman with her breasts bared. Either that, or I'm hallucinating again.
posted by pracowity at 11:00 PM on June 18

(And for those who don't work in such a place, there still is at least one photo here of a very young woman with her breasts bared. She is there regardless of where you are.)
posted by pracowity at 11:02 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

i've always been entranced by the way that the camera can mimic the imperfect, fleeting gaze of the human eye, but this motherfucker takes the cake. thanks!
posted by es_de_bah at 11:27 PM on June 18

i love Michael Ackerman, my girlfriend got him to signed her copy of End Time City, he wrote "this book is way too expensive, you should have stole it".
posted by SageLeVoid at 12:53 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

I get some of his stuff, but too much of it seems to me to be extremely motion-blurred or unfocused in a way that suggests trying too hard, as if it's trying to be Important and Recognized as Art by Trained Committees of Art Judges and Cultured Persons.

I guess I haven't been trained to understand why I should like it.
posted by kcds at 4:08 AM on June 19 [4 favorites]

Hmm, gritty, blurry photos of New York made New York look gritty and blurry. Since I've given up heavy drinking, I've come to realize that NYC doesn't look that that at all. So, non-NYCers, don't be fooled.
posted by fuq at 6:04 AM on June 19

The photos in the "Varanasi" link blew me away. It takes a lot for photography to really grab me artistically, but those pictures are beautiful, dirty, dynamic and a little crazy.
posted by picea at 6:31 AM on June 19

Fiction is an amazing body of work and but is nearly impossible to find.

Someone else who works in a similar vein is Teru Kuwayama who also happen to have been roommates with Ackerman back when he was shooting much of the work that makes up Fiction.
posted by photoslob at 6:55 AM on June 19

Seconding picea's comment about the photos of Varanasi. Rarely do images of India ever capture, in my own experience, the sensory expression of the country or its people, even in some small fragment of what it's like there. His vision of Varanasi is way darker than my own but he's there, I can FEEL the place in his images.
posted by nickyskye at 12:21 PM on June 19